Social interactions and recommendations like +1s on Google+, Facebook shares, comments, and likes, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account a range of social signals when determining a website’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, rather than aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere over other aspects of their search algorithm. In summary, Google’s strategy is a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media community in the world. It has been estimated that one great post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems influence search engine rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out each day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
Google’s own social media site naturally carries great authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting socially on Google+ each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your web page has, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your web page has accrued, amount and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search rankings. These include positive and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social marketing performance in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into your brand’s online visibility on social media, avert disasters, spy on your competitors, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and identify new opportunities for engagement. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific topics, businesses, brands, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, the ability to track social media channels like blogging, forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., message boards, video sites, and user-generated content (UGC) is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by a cross-section of groups that include online reputation managers, marketing professionals, market researchers, social engagement and community staff, agencies, and sales teams. Typically, smaller businesses do not can’t afford to pay media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately various technology companies have developed affordable tools and solutions to facilitate the tracking of a wide range of social media channels, enabling companies to track what consumers are saying about their brands so they can respond proactively to conversations and interact with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. To learn more, visit this page:
(Do you know how to effectively track social signals?)
This article discusses a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs for tracking social media signals and growing your social media influence.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help you improve your social media presence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. Your job is to convert reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a system that any user can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts with highest number of shares display green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of 2,000+ sites over a period of 3 months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping their metrics on “green”. According to the plugin developers, they were able to notice a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in better search engine rankings, more traffic and increased revenue!)
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Here are just some of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more from your WP Dashboard on your website:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
Social Metrics Pro installs just like every plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s objective is to change all the reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know where to apply more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Track Social Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you track and monitor social activity from networks like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social media networks work best for my site?
- Which posts are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Social Metrics Pro Features
Social Metrics Pro offers website owners with a number of great features. Below we have listed some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. Access updated stats from your WordPress dashboard, display popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click auto-upgrade functionality. Update the plugin with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive email notifications when new plugin updates are released.
- Uses minimal server resources. The plugin generates social metrics reports fast, using minimal hosting resources. The tool also includes the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server resources used to compile the data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort and filter the data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by category, post type, post authors, or by publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export filtered, sorted data and custom queries to Excel for further analysis. Data can be exported in tab-delimited and comma-separated file formats, and imported to the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(SocialMetricsPro is very simple to use … just change reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback plugin customers have written about the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
”As with any cool plugin, it solves a very simple problem – how to view how well your WordPress posts are being promoted.” Adam Small, Marketing Tech Blog
***
”If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve.” Goes one of the most important sayings in business. And this is particularly true for tracking of your social mentions I found. There were two things that helped me a great deal to increase sharing after installing Social Metrics: First, I was able to see that some of my articles would perform much better on networks I wasn’t particularly using, such as StumbleUpon for example. Secondly, I could filter out the best performing content more easily and analyse what makes my readers share. Since then I have focused strongly on producing and replicating those posts that performed best.” Leo Widrich, Co-Founder of Buffer
Plugin Tips
A step-by-step guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Social Metrics Pro Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, complete refund guarantee.
Plugin Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This enables you to set up SocialMetricsPro on one web site only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Licensing – This license option allows you to activate Social Metrics Pro on multiple domains that you own. Price includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Social Metrics Pro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing when this article was published. This may not be the actual price set by the product developer when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing:
Additional Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Get The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account various social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing strategy and shows you how and where to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save time and resources by focusing on under-optimized social media campaigns.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
***
***